'Inner Fish' Is Really Inner Design

by
Brian Thomas, M.S. *

Evolutionary scientists are often on the lookout for evidence that they hope will vindicate Darwin’s outdated theory of evolution. Recently, a team of geneticists discovered that although the non-coding DNA sequences of fish have “almost no” matching sequences in humans, their gene expression profiles are nevertheless similar. The researchers referred to this similarity as “a basic ancestral pattern…the so-called ‘inner fish’.”1 But this interpretation not only presupposes evolution, it also leaves critical questions unanswered.

The authors of the study, which appeared in the Journal of Biology, concluded that “there are clearly strong evolutionary constraints on tissue-specific gene expression.”2 But this ignores the possibility that gene expression is constrained not by “evolution,” but by practical and biophysical parameters. Further, only intentional foresight (a planning mind) could possibly specify the required networking information to provide functionality to a system with such practical constraints. If gene expression was designed, as is evident from this and other studies, then the similarities observed would have nothing to do with having evolved, but everything to do with the limits found inside cellular systems.3

The researchers found that among ten common tissues, gene expression patterns were most similar in the brain: “The relatively low divergence of gene expression in brain is hypothesized to be due to constraints imposed by the participation of neurons in more functional interactions than cells in other tissues.”2 So in the same article, the authors state that few changes in gene expression can be tolerated by brain tissue on the one hand, and on the other hand that these very same expression patterns evolved through a long process of changes!

Perhaps this type of contradiction is what led the authors to write, “A major challenge will be to understand the precise mechanisms by which many gene expression patterns remain similar despite extensive…restructuring.”2 Figuring out exactly how evolution could possibly have structured virtually unchangeable gene expression routes by a long succession of changes will certainly be a major, if not impossible, challenge.

New cellular information codes are being found at more and more levels, and each discovery, like the similarity of gene expression patterns between species despite having entirely different genetic sequences, provides more confidence that “In the beginning, God created….”